Archive for August, 2012

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Death Of The Left. “That’s what happens when you become an anachronism. For me, the greatest line of the week was Ryan’s, the one about the fading Obama poster on the wall of an unemployed young American. Once upon a time, the left was able to lay claim to intellectual and moral superiority, and to look at the conservatives with imperious disdain. No more. Their heroes are fading to the point where a cultural icon, from Hollywood of all places, sees that the seat of authority is entirely empty, and that it’s time to just let its nominal occupant go. Away.”

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Glass Shape Affects How Quickly People Drink Alcohol. “The participants were almost twice as slow when drinking alcohol from the straight-sided glass compared to the curved glass. There was no difference in drinking rates from the glasses when the drink was non-alcoholic. The researchers suggest that the reason for this may be because it is more difficult to accurately judge the halfway point of shaped glasses. As a result, drinkers are less able to gauge how much they have consumed.”

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

OIKOPHOBIA UPDATE: Robert Wargas: Behold The Self-Hating White Person. “Since progressivism is largely a status game, in which people compete for social prestige by repeating a set of approved phrases and opinions to other status-seeking mandarins, it’s not surprising that some will go to sado-masochistic lengths to remain part of the alpha group. By now, the increasingly creepy tendency of using the word ‘white’ as a glib insult has become well established in left-wing commentary.”

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

HOT INTERSPECIES SEX: New DNA Analysis Shows Ancient Humans Interbred with Denisovans. “A new high-coverage DNA sequencing method reconstructs the full genome of Denisovans–relatives to both Neandertals and humans–from genetic fragments in a single finger bone.” Though technically if you can interbreed, it’s not actually “interspecies,” right?

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

THE GROWTH SECTOR IN FASHION: Plus-sized clothes. “Fighting mediocre sales and a sluggish economy, retailers are finding there’s a booming market for plus-size clothing. While the category has been getting notice for years, clothing companies desperate for sales see zooming growth in dressing America’s expanding waistline. Many are opening specialty stores, expanding plus-size departments and targeting ads directly to the curvy woman. . . . More than one-third of American adults are obese and nearly two-thirds of women are at least overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts say that at least half of women now wear dresses and pants size 14 or larger — which falls into the plus-size category — and this group controls nearly 30% of the purchasing power for clothes, according to NPD Group.”

August 31, 2012

I have thought for a while that if the election is close, Obama would play the Hillary for VP card (I am not the only one who thought that). Now that she will supposedly be out of the country, I figure that is proof that she will be the mystery speaker and will accept the nomination for VP. If the rules allow this, then it is Obama’s only chance. the press would talk about nothing else for the remainder of this election cycle.

The press will crow:

1. What a brilliant move.
2. He put his country first
3. Smart enough to remove the mistake of Biden
4. Dream Team etc.

If they do not do this it can only be for two reasons.

1. Hillary said take a hike
2. Obama is a true Narcissist that can not share the spotlight or admit he has failed to the point he needed her.

We will find out soon.

Well, if the Hillary story turns out to be bogus, Jody will have bragging rights. But I don’t think Obama is capable of admitting a mistake, and no matter how it’s spun, that’s what this would be.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “Not gonna happen. BHO chose Joe Biden as life insurance . Hilary as Veep would indicate a death wish.”

MORE: Reader Bob McKenna writes: “Jody is on to something. Conservative bloggers should be reporting it as a strong rumor in order to steal their thunder in case it really is being considered. Heck, maybe Sarah or Rush should recommend it to prevent it.”

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

THE SWEETNESS OF THEIR BITTER TEARS: Occupy RNC ends in tears, frustration. “Republican National Convention protesters sobbed in each other’s arms as their weeklong series of protests came to an abrupt and unremarkable end… Following a fragmented march against the GOP, TheDC’s photo team spoke to several protesters who said they were disappointed by low turnout at protests and the lack of open discussion between protesters and Republican leadership.”

Pro Tip: It’s easier to have an “open discussion” with people when you’re not dressed as a giant floppy vagina.

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

THE GROWTH OF THE “MUD RUN.” “Mud runs, essentially military-style obstacle races in muck, might appall the neat freak but for some people mud is the medium for a challenging test of true grit and fitness.”

August 31, 2012

Rattled and bitter that they could not knock the Romney-Ryan ticket off-message, the Obama team and its allies in the blogosphere fixated on Clint Eastwood. Listen, I was there and it was darn weird. But at times it was funny and devastating in its dismissal of the president’s excuses. And in clips and sound bites the day after the live performance, the oddness is diminished and the punch lines seem more biting. In simple terms, the movie icon encapsulated the message of the convention: If someone is doing a bad job, you have to fire him.

Eastwood apparently so annoyed the egomaniacal president that the leader of the Free World felt compelled to hit back via Twitter (“this seat is taken”) at the movie star. Talk about losing your presidential aura. Empty chair = Obama is now a powerful association. Will the chair be in ads?

In this, as in so many other artificial kerfuffles, the media’s feigned outrage only serves Romney’s purpose. Now everyone is familiar with Eastwood’s cracks, and the conversation has taken the place of any criticism of the two nominees’ speeches.

Thursday night was a critical point in the campaign and arguably the point at which Romney (with help from Eastwood) broke free of the media filter. Recall last week that the entire press corps was focused on Todd Akin. Then it became an obsessive plea for more details about Romney’s policies, which, unlike the president, he has. Then there was the fixation on likability. That went down the drain when on Thursday night Romney appeared, if not likable, admirable. I now await the argument that personal qualities are irrelevant to the presidency.

Related: Getting To Know Romney The Do-Gooder. “Whatever the reasons, the degree to which Romney has been a practitioner of personal kindness and good works is extraordinary. Whether he wins the election or not, it’s clear that Romney is a very unusual human being, with a combination of brains, hard-nosed business sense and competitiveness, and personal kindness that goes way beyond anything most people consider necessary or even possible. For a politician, this is so unusual as to be unique. . . . People keep saying about Romney, ‘the more I know of him the more I like him.’ Not just on this blog, but in comments all over the internet. It strikes me that Obama is just the opposite—the more people know of him the more they dislike him.”

I just wonder if the Dems will be able to put together a video marking Obama’s selfless acts of compassion when no one was paying attention.

I’m not sure he could have pulled that off if he’d delivered a slick telepromptered pitch. As Mr. Hayward suggests, the hard lines packed more of a punch for being delivered in the midst of a Bob Newhart empty-chair shtick from the Dean Martin show circa 1968. Indeed, they were some of the hardest lines of the convention and may well prove the take-home (“We own this country . . . Politicians are employees of ours . . . And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go”), but they seemed more effective for appearing to emerge extemporaneously from the general shambles.

The curse of political operatives is that they make everything the same. A guy smoothly reading platitudinous codswallop while rotating his head from the left-hand teleprompter to the right-hand teleprompter like clockwork as if he’s at Centre Court watching the world’s slowest Wimbledon rally is a very reductive idea of “professionalism.” Even politicians you’re well disposed to come across as slick bores in that format. Which is by way of saying Clint is too sharp and too crafty not to have known what he was doing.

And Ann Althouse comments: “Here’s the whole Eastwood performance. Is it really that hard to get? No, they’re merely playing dumb (and humorless), even though they want the other party to be known as ‘the stupid party.’”

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

IMPROVING CELL PHONE PERFORMANCE with “nanoresonators.” “Researchers have learned how to mass produce tiny mechanical devices that could help cell phone users avoid the nuisance of dropped calls and slow downloads. The devices are designed to ease congestion over the airwaves to improve the performance of cell phones and other portable devices. . . . The Purdue team has created devices called nanoelectromechanical resonators, which contain a tiny beam of silicon that vibrates when voltage is applied. Researchers have shown that the new devices are produced with a nearly 100 percent yield, meaning nearly all of the devices created on silicon wafers were found to function properly.”

August 31, 2012

Related: Justin Katz: The Brilliance of Clint’s Empty Chair. “Viewers who found the speech peculiar (mainly those in academia, entertainment, and media, I’d wager) may have done so because Eastwood used a theatrical device in the service of the wrong script… from their point of view and according to their expectations. As a thought experiment, they should imagine some other actor’s using the exact same gimmick at the Democrat National Convention, with a non-present Mitt Romney.”

August 31, 2012

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Rosacea may be caused by mite faeces in your pores. “The disease affects all races but is known as the “curse of the Celts” as it is thought to especially affect people with very fair skin, although it may simply be more visible on their skin. Rosacea is commonly blamed on another alleged Celtic curse – excessive drinking. But while alcohol can trigger a flare-up, so can many other kinds of stress. Teetotallers are just as susceptible, according to the US National Rosacea Society. . . . Kavanagh notes that one kind of bacteria in the mites’ guts, Bacillus oleronius, is killed by the antibiotics that work against rosacea, and not by other types of antibiotics. His lab reported in June that 80 per cent of people with the most common kind of rosacea have immune cells in their blood that react strongly to two proteins from B. Oleronius, releasing triggers of inflammation. Only 40 per cent of people without rosacea have this reaction. Kavanagh is now trying to get funding to develop antibodies to the bacterial proteins, to track their location and link them more firmly to the disease. Ultimately, treatments aimed at the trigger proteins may prevent rosacea.”

And Jim Treacher emails: “If Clint Eastwood is such a babbling old fool, why did he make the most powerful man in the world bare his claws?” The reaction here has been most edifying, and certainly won’t help Obama’s already-shriveling likeability.

Plus, from reader Brian Hancock:

None of the “fact checkers” have claimed this was a lie: “We all know that Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party.” Must be true. =)

August 31, 2012

IT’S LIKE ALL THOSE WAR-CRIMES COMPLAINTS AND “HAVE YOU NO DECENCY” TROLLS DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WERE JUST POLITICAL BULLSHIT: The Reckoning: CIA Interrogation Investigation Closed Without Further Charges. “In the meantime, the Obama administration that once savaged President Bush for surveilling American citizens who abet the enemy tells us that there is no problem killing American citizens — with a straight face and without the slightest hint that some apology might be in order.” Including from some Obama-loving bloggers who have changed their tune since the White House became theirs.

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

BLUE-MODEL FAILURE UPDATE: Illinois Bonds Downgraded over Pension Crisis. “Illinois taxpayers are facing huge liabilities for their state’s bloated, poorly managed, and underfunded pension system, and public sector workers face an uncertain future, as taxpayers are unlikely to cough up the huge sums required to make good on the debt. Now everything is getting worse: S&P has downgraded Illinois bonds, meaning that the interest rate on the state’s huge debt is likely to rise, squeezing the state treasury even further. . . . With public-sector unions fighting tooth and nail to preserve their cushy benefits and expensive pension plans, old style Dems like FDR, Harry Truman and Fiorello LaGuardia—all of whom thought that public sector unionism was a terrible idea—are looking smarter and smarter all the time. The combination of collective bargaining and the power of a focused voting lobby and campaign finance machine has unbalanced the budgets of too many cities and states to retain much appeal to the general public.”

August 31, 2012

Now that he’s officially the Republican nominee for president and has an excellent chance of becoming the most powerful man in the world, I feel free to admit, in the full knowledge that nobody cares, that I never liked Mitt Romney. My distaste for him isn’t merely personal or political but also petty and superficial. There’s the breathless, Eddie Attaboy delivery, that half-smile of pitying condescension in debates or interviews when someone disagrees with him, the Ken doll mannerisms, his wanton use of the word “gosh”—the whole Romney package has been nails on a blackboard to me.

But his examination of Romney’s character also sheds light on why the lefties can’t stand him:

The Romneys present a picture of an American family that popular culture has been trying to undo since—well, since An American Family, the 1973 PBS documentary that exposed the typical household as a cauldron of resentment and infidelity.

And now, here, 40 years later, it’s as though it all never happened: a happy American family, led by a baby boomer with no sense of irony! Romney is the sophisticate’s nightmare.

Almost every personal detail about Romney I found endearing. But my slowly softening opinion went instantly to goo when The Real Romney unfolded an account of his endless kindnesses—unbidden, unsung, and utterly gratuitous. “It seems that everyone who has known him has a tale of his altruism,” the authors write. I was struck by the story of a Mormon family called (unfortunately) Nixon. In the 1990s a car wreck rendered two of their boys quadriplegics. Drained financially from extraordinary expenses, Mr. Nixon got a call from Romney, whom he barely knew, asking if he could stop by on Christmas Eve. When the day came, all the Romneys arrived bearing presents, including a VCR and a new sound system the Romney boys set up. Later Romney told Nixon that he could take care of the children’s college tuition, which in the end proved unnecessary. “I knew how busy he was,” Nixon told the authors. “He was actually teaching his boys, saying, ‘This is what we do. We do this as a family.’ ”

Romney’s oldest son Tagg once made the same point to the radio host Hugh Hewitt. “He was constantly doing things like that and never telling anyone about them,” Tagg said. “He doesn’t want to tell people about them, but he wanted us to see him. He would let the kids see it because he wanted it to rub off on us.”

Intolerable. A person like that might make you feel like you aren’t good enough. The comparison might make you uncomfortable. This cannot be allowed. A “sophisticate’s nightmare,” indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Zach Barbera writes:

I’ve lived in MA for 30 years and until last night did not love or feel passionate about Mitt. But, what really won me over is the realization that it’s not that he’s a cold fish, seeing his family and hearing the stories about him makes that plenty clear, it’s just that he’s so d@mned competent and quietly self-assured. He doesn’t feel the need to put on the displays or make biting partisan points. He means it he wishes Obama didn’t fail, he wants our system to work and be led by competent men and women. That’s why he feels that one of Obama’s worst sins (enough that he mocked it) is his hubris, with the grand claims that his presidency marks the waters receding and the earth healing. Mitt doesn’t need to make those promises, he’s not applying to be our personal savior he’s treating this as if he’s walking into a shareholder meeting and asking us to make him our CEO. Once that’s done he’ll get to work on the job and not be dragged int the personal lives of the board. After all these years, I finally get him. And find that I am starting to think that he has what it takes to become a great president.

August 31, 2012

PREPARING FOR THE DNC: Dems Giving Away Free Tickets To Obama’s Speech in Bars. “If less than 50 people arrive, everyone will get a pair! If more than 50 folks arrive, we will do a random drawing to determine our winners. There is no cost involved. We’re not selling the tickets, we’re giving them away.”

Someone needs to fill them in on the difference between “less than” and “fewer than.” Whoever wrote this must have had unionized teachers. . . .

UPDATE: Reader David Henderson writes: “Did you also notice that the note trolling for Obama attendees starts with ‘Here’s the rules’? Yikes. Even more evidence for your claim that the writer was taught by a unionized teacher.” Sounds like it was one from Chicago. . . .

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

FROM BRYAN PRESTON: Video: Protesters Threaten Tatler Editor on Last Night of GOP Convention. “Now, the clips don’t say much more than what I’ve said above, but here’s a real kicker: The Obama Department of Justice was caught on tape earlier, helping the occupiers right here in Tampa. I find that both very interesting and deeply disturbing. If we had a Congress that wasn’t in the grip of the Reid faction in the Senate, there might be an investigation of why the government appeared to be playing both sides of the convention protest, keeping the peace on the one hand while also disturbing the peace on the other.”

More on the lame protest effort here: “The showing was pathetic; my friend and I counted 200 at the most for any given rally or march. Fifteen thousand reportedly were expected. Most news outlets reported a vague ‘hundreds’ actually showing up. The showing was a combination of professional activists, the homeless, the schizophrenic, the addicted, and the disenfranchised young. A Voice of America article that claimed “hundreds” of young people took to the streets of Tampa this week is true only if one holds a very loose definition of ‘young.’”

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

If media “fact checkers” are just impartial guardians of the truth, how come they got their own facts wrong about Paul Ryan’s speech, and did so in a way that helped President Obama’s re-election effort?

Case in point was the rush of “fact check” stories claiming Ryan misled when he talked about a shuttered auto plant in his home state.

“That’s not true,” Kessler said. “The plant was closed in December 2008, before Obama was sworn in.”

What’s not true are Kessler’s “facts.” Ryan didn’t suggest Obama was responsible for shuttering the plant. Instead, he correctly noted that Obama promised during the campaign that the troubled plant “will be here for another hundred years” if his policies were enacted.

Also, the plant didn’t close in December 2008. It was still producing cars until April 2009.

An AP “fact check” also claimed that “the plant halted production in December 2008″ even though the AP itself reported in April 2009 that the plant was only then “closing for good.”

CNN’s John King made the same claim about that plant closure. But when CNN looked more carefully at the evidence, it — to its credit — concluded that what Ryan said was “true.”

And they wonder why their audiences, and credibility, continue to shrink.

August 31, 2012

A CONTRARIAN TAKE ON THE CHINA CONTRARIANS’ TAKE: China’s Long History of Defying the Doomsayers. I dunno. From 1949 to 1999 was a pretty grim period. If something like that happened here, we’d call it “doom.” See also Tai-Ping Rebellion.

August 31, 2012

August 31, 2012

ALL THE SOUND AND FURY, ENDS WITH A WHIMPER: Justice Department ends criminal probe of detainee deaths. “The Justice Department will not file criminal charges against CIA officials after an investigation into the deaths of two detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday. . . . The end of the criminal investigation concludes the Justice Department’s inquiry into interrogation practices that occurred under the George W. Bush administration after 9/11.”

August 31, 2012

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: Caesareans and pain relief for mothers giving birth ‘should be cut to save the NHS money.’ “Family doctors are being told to try to talk women out of having Caesareans and very strong painkillers during birth to save the NHS money. New guidelines drawn up for GPs urge them to encourage women to have natural labours with as little medical help as possible. They also remind doctors to tell women to consider having their babies outside hospital in midwife-run units or in their own homes.”

August 30, 2012

It was an old man’s delivery, but overstatedly so for effect. It was a cutting delivery and for that reason delivered in low key. But for all of Clint Eastwood’s rhetorical cleverness at the Republican convention it derived its effectiveness precisely because it wasn’t one of those “I take this platform tonight with pen in hand, bearing in mind the immortal words of Clancy M. Duckworth” type orations. It wasn’t the speech of someone who was running for office.

Rather it might have come from Mr. Weller down at the corner office musing on simple things to not very important people. How it wasn’t good form to mess things up continuously. How one might lose faith in a man who made one broken promise too many. How at the end of the day everyone either did the job or quit out of decency. Even Presidents.

There was no malice in it. Just a tone of regret. But it was redolent of memory too. Of simple things a world away from the Mountaintop; of sentiments a light-year from dramatic arcs, and of ordinary happiness in a universe apart from grand bargains and high-flown rhetorical visions. They were truths that everyone who has ever worked knows but has somehow forgotten because it was so ordinary.

But they were never known to those who had never worked a real job in their lives. And that is the wonder. That they never knew them. Thus the speech was at once us versus them; it was the check in the mail against the certainties of the heart. Every true challenge is built on the bricks of memory. And there were as many challenges in the Eastwood speech as the stones we stand on.

August 30, 2012

ROMNEY: “If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama? You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as President, when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.”

August 30, 2012

August 30, 2012

TIMOTHY DALRYMPLE: Romney at the RNC: From the Audacity of Hype to the Tenacity of Hope. “Obama 2008 was about the audacity of hype. What Obama sold in 2008 was less hope than hype, because hope is not baseless, and Obama was all surface and no substance, all promise and no power. Americans — some of them, anyway — fell so in love with the promises that they failed to note that Obama possessed neither the record, the experience nor the expertise to suggest that he could follow through on those promises. Romney 2012 is about the tenacity of hope. The miracle that hope endures even through the worst of times, that it survives like a flower bud beneath the ruins of a stagnant economy and a dysfunctional government.”

August 30, 2012

“I’VE BEEN DOING THIS SINCE GRADUATION, AND I CAN’T DO IT FOR FOUR MORE YEARS.” Boy, the “fading Obama poster” ad didn’t take long:

UPDATE: Reader Rosslyn Smith writes: “I think parents of kids who had to move back home will be a far bigger audience for this than the kids themselves. That may also be the intention, considering that the progression begins with a crib in a nursery. Who remembers what a child’s nursery looked like other than the child’s parents?”

August 30, 2012

Administrators at Long Island University, a private university in New York with multiple campuses, had to make budget cuts and are dealing with faculty pushback after the financial aid awarded by one of the college’s two main campuses exceeded the budgeted amount. Administrators overspent in an effort to meet enrollment targets and meet demonstrated need.

The university does not have a large endowment, so most of the aid came in the form of discounted tuition, meaning the college likely will not bring in as much in tuition revenue as expected. Administrators said the campus in question, referred to as the Post campus, did not have procedures in place to account for the financial aid awards relative to the budget.

“Existing business processes at Post did not effectively track the level of funds either committed or accepted by incoming students,” wrote President David Steinberg in a letter responding to an inquiry by the president of the faculty union. “By late fall 2011 it became clear that we were over-expending financial aid resources.”

Really? They “did not have procedures in place to account for the financial aid awards relative to the budget?”

August 30, 2012

August 30, 2012

BOGUS ETHICS CHARGE DEBUNKED: University: No Scientific Misconduct In Regnerus Study. But the purpose of the complaint — to discourage others from doing work that reaches politically undesirable conclusions — has been served. And make no mistake: That was the purpose of the complaint.

Lefties had better hope that this doesn’t start a round of tit-for-tat, though, because it’s pretty clear who’s more vulnerable if this becomes a popular sport.

What’s so pitiful about this story is that about 200 or so of our best and brightest had to cheat on an open book exam at a school where grade inflation is so rampant you would have to cite ayn rand or favorably refer to W. to get a B.

August 30, 2012

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Lubricated nanoparticles penetrate the brain. “It was thought that the adhesiveness of brain tissue limited the size of particles that can smoothly spread through the brain. Signalling molecules, nutrients and waste products below 64 nanometres in diameter can pass through the tissue with relative ease, but larger nanoparticles – suitable for delivering a payload of drugs to a specific location in the brain – quickly get stuck. Now Hanes and his colleagues have doubled that size limit. They coated their nanoparticles with a densely-packed polymer shield, which lubricates their surface by preventing electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions with the surrounding tissue.”

August 30, 2012

August 30, 2012

IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE MY TALE, OR THINK THIS STORY’S TRUE, GET A BOTTLE OF RUM AND AN ESKATROL AND WATCH THE SAME THING HAPPEN TO YOU: Dual effects noted for alcohol and energy drink co-ingestion. “Although consuming alcohol mixed with energy drinks (AmED) increases alertness and may negate some intoxication-related sedation effects, it can lead to negative physiological and psychological side effects associated with overstimulation.”

August 30, 2012

ROGER SIMON: Dateline Tampa: It’s Clint! (Is Hollywood Really Conservative??) Watch for the preference cascade. “Hollywood conservatives used to complain that, yeah, Eastwood was one of us but he never really does anything about it. This should end that. Bang. It’s the Hollywood liberals who now should be shivering in their bourgeois fuddy-duddy boots. They’re not the cool guys anymore.”

People are talking about Romney being upstaged by Ryan, and I’m sure they’ll talk about Romney being upstaged by Eastwood. But here’s the thing: Worries about being “upstaged” are for actors. Presidents shouldn’t mind sharing the spotlight, as long as the job gets done.

August 30, 2012

UPDATE: A New York reader protests that it’s gotten a lot of coverage in New York. I think, though, that it would have gotten more coverage — maybe not Akin-level, but at least 500 milli-Akins — nationally had it involved Republicans. Because of the narrative, don’t you know? Maybe not.

August 30, 2012

August 30, 2012

A VACCINE WOULD BE BETTER, BUT THIS IS GOOD: University of Cape Town Researchers Believe They Have Found a Single Dose Cure for Malaria. “Unlike conventional multidrug malaria treatments that the malaria parasite has become resistant to, Professor Kelly Chibale and his colleagues now believe that they have discovered a drug that over 18 months of trials ‘killed these resistant parasites instantly.’ Animal tests also showed that it was not only safe and effective, but there were no adverse reported side effects. Clinical tests are scheduled for the end of 2013.”

You know, the Democrats’ media base has served two functions. One, of course, has been to misinform the people who don’t pay much attention. It can still do that, though with reduced efficacy. But the other was to demoralize or intimidate the opposition. That part seems to have pretty much fallen by the wayside.

August 30, 2012

August 30, 2012

ANDREW KLAVAN: MSNBC and The Big Narrative Lie. “MSNBC goofs cut away during every speech made by a minority. They didn’t want anyone to see that men and women of color were a cherished and honored part of the Republican party. That’s not their narrative so, by gum, they weren’t going to show it. Which raises — not a complaint — but a question: What good is a philosophy that can’t withstand even the sight of the simple facts?”

August 30, 2012

ROGER KIMBALL ON RYAN’S SPEECH: “I suspect that Joe Biden is felling pretty awful this morning. For that matter, I’d wager Barack Obama has had better nights’ rest. Condi Rice’s speech was bad enough for the the Democrats — it was serious, dignified, eloquent — but Paul Ryan hit it out of the park. They both must have watched Ryan’s speech. They both must have come away with an empty feeling in the pit of the stomach. And poor Joe has to debate Paul Ryan in a little more than a month. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.”

August 30, 2012

August 30, 2012

UNEXPECTEDLY: Jobless Claims Remain At One-Month High: “More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign that progress in the labor market is faltering amid a slowing economy. . . . Jobless claims were little changed at 374,000 in the week ended Aug. 25, matching the upwardly revised figure from the prior week, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The median forecast of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for 370,000. The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure, climbed to a six-week high.” Expect this week’s numbers to be revised upward later. That seems to happen every time.

August 30, 2012

August 30, 2012

A PATHETIC DISPLAY: Fact-checking the factcheckers on Ryan’s speech. “Clearly, the job of ‘fact checker’ in the mainstream media must not involve research skills. Nor does it take much in comprehension, because these supposed fact checks started with a misrepresentation of what Ryan actually said. Here are his actual words, emphasis mine.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Robert Simmons writes: “As much as it pains me, the closing of the plant did happen under Bush. The decision to close the plant was made in 2008. While I think Obamanomics has been nothing short of disastrous, it’s a stretch to pin that particular point of failure on Barry.” It’s not whether the failure is his fault — it’s that he basically promised to keep it open for 100 years.

MORE: Reader Rick Licari writes:

I wrote about this on a message board a bit earlier, but I think this is a case of the chattering class so busily getting caught up in the details of a speech (when did the plant close?!?) that they’re missing the message…and the fact that Ryan never says the plant closed under Obama.

This is what Ryan said:

“Especially in Janesville where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, “I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.”

That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.”

Obama spoke at Janesville in February of 2008, the plant was closed down in December of 2008 (though not shuttered until June 2009).

Three things stand out about this, first, why a private company (the largest in its field, too) needs government support. Second, Ryan is right it did shut down within a year of Obama speaking. Third, GM started requesting aid from the government in 2006 for various reasons, finally getting some cash to hold off their inevitable bankruptcy in December 2008. So, what Ryan is saying isn’t “Obama failed GM at Janesville.” But “it is ludicrous to plan your success around the whims of government, you will get screwed.”

I think they’re just trying to throw out enough chaff to obscure that point.

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